An American apocalypse
by theRandomscrolls
Summary: You're reading my journal. That's ok, 'cuz when i wrote it hoping someone would find it and read it. I hoped that someone would know my name and the names of the amazing people surrounding me when all the zombies were shot and burned, and our bodies had been buried or eaten. So go ahead. Read it.
1. Entry 1

**One day I was sitting at my desk doing some Spanish homework and a sudden thought struck me: zombies and Hetalia. Those two don't meet often enough. Two things happened. 1) I accidentally wrote 'Russia + zombies= pure terror' on my homework, 2) this idea was born. It will be a series of entries in a journal Al records , in this story just your average high-school student at Gakuen Academy, relating the tale of how he and a small collection of survivors cut a path to safety through an apocalyptic zombie virus. Pairings will be developed over time- I don't want to insult peoples' intelligence by stating blatantly who's gonna get with who, but I will say you can count on Ameripan (Sorry USUK fans, Amerus and the variations, but they've been my OTP since I joined the fandom in 2010).**

**With thanks to my good friend, who is Purple Duck at school and Icecreamcadeyjay on Deviant Art, for her constant support of my writing habits, her help when writer's block has me by the balls (which don't technically exist anywhere on my anatomy, but when writer's block has 'em, damn it hurts) and her willingness to listen to my constant babble of crazy ideas. Thanks Purple Duck. You're one of Swan's best angels. And I bet my feathers you're the only person who knows what the hell I meant by that.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia (dammit).**

Wednesday 12th January 2013

Well crap. I never thought I'd be writing a journal, diary, whatever you wanna call it, for the reason I picked this book up.

I saw this sitting on a desk open to the front page and it was clean. The only writing in it was a couple of equations at the top and today's date- which I left up there- so I just scooped it up and started writing in it. The worst thing is I know whose book this is. Roderich Edelstein . He has just about the most legible handwriting in our class (that's what the teacher's called it, 'legible', why can't they just use simple words like 'neat'?). It's so neat and tidy I recognised it straight at the start just by looking at the clean curves of the 'j' in January. But it's weird, because I feel bad that Roderich might come by later and find his new Math book covered with demented scribbles in my handwriting. Jeez look at this stuff I can't even write straight! The letters are dancing all up and down and over the lines because I can't stop shaking. No surprises I guess, since I coughed up nearly my weight in phlegm like half an hour ago.

I can hear them pounding on the door. That's not doing anything to help my shaking hands. Not at all. I should get up and help but the last time I tried I couldn't even walk without stumbling and swaying side-to-side like I'm drunk. Then again, the things outside are stumbling too but they're doing a freaking number on the door. When we came in Ivan was carrying me on his back. He didn't waste time putting me down, he shoved a desk in front of the door, pulled a bookshelf on its side and added that to the desk and kicked a bunch of chairs in front of it too. This is with me on his back, me the 160-something jock on his back, wheezing from a panic attack and being a total dead weight in general. Gotta hand it to that guy he may look like a weird Halloween costume, but he's strong as heck.

He'll probably put up the biggest fight when the door is splintered at the insistence of the thing outside, who were people I've known for three years and loved as family until this morning.

Fuck me I can't believe I'm writing this.

Here it is: I'm sitting in my Math room with a couple of other people in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.

ZOMBIE  APOCALYPSE

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! THAT'S SO GODDAMN STUPID! I cannot fucking believe I just wrote that! Shit like this happens in movies with actors like Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe playing the hero, who gets to escape with minimal injuries and a hot chick on their arm. Not in real life with some American kid Hollywood has never seen before called Al Jones, who's trapped as trapped can get in his most hated classroom with a four guys and Bella Dubois who definitely does not fall into the 'hot' category!

Ok I need to calm down. I really really don't want to relive the events that have got me stuck in this room, but maybe if I get this off my chest it will make me feel better. The human mind is better at forgetting if what they're trying to forget isn't unspoken or taboo.

The first lesson was the lesson the world ended for me.

It was English and I swear my brains were dribbling outta my ears, having melted from the incredible unbelievable boredom of that lesson. Melville is actually one of my favourite writers, but Mr Whitfield can make even the most interesting writing duller than dishwater with that soulless voice of his. Excuse me: could. He's dead now. Either eaten or walking around in search of 'food' (that's us).

Kiku's in most of my classes, so he was in this one, and so was Bella and Ivan. There were a bunch of others I wish to God could be here, helping Ivan and Luddie to fortify the barrier. Feliks, Mathias, Lili, Charlotte, Dawson (yeah Dawson, I'm grieving for that insulting douche), Antonio, Toris, Eduard, Gilbert, Cody, Kaoru, Simon, Berwald, Carter, Jasmine, Tino, Asal, Emil, Vash, Sadik, Nikos, Arooj, Kaleigh, Jane, Markus, Sharlotte, Mo, Lukas, Sayid, Heracles, Alex, Tyrone, Romeo, Yisrael, Tara, Clarie, Elizabeta, Myra, Magic, Valkien and a lot of others'. I've already forgotten their names and their faces are gonna follow quickly…

The first sign that a massive shit storm was headed our way was the commotion at the school gates. Gakuen Academy, the name of the building you'll find our bones if the things outside have their way, has a huge tall fence topped with sharp spikes wrapped around the length of the school grounds. It's not at all a modest stretch since the school campus is about 10 miles if you count the playing field ground, swimming courts and, and oh fuck it I don't want to write about those. There's a butt load of facilities on this campus. Anyways someone was trying to get through the gates. It seemed like just a couple of people at first. Maybe some of the media vultures that loved to hover around here. I glanced out the window once or twice, but mostly ignored it. English in Mr Whitfield's hands becomes a thousand times more difficult than it needs to be, so you have to focus like a pro if you want a good grade.

But that crowd at the gates kept growing. And the stream of staff and security going to investigate the problem. Eventually it got to the point where it was distracting Mr Whitfield. Everyone looked at the window. Ivan stood up and went over to it, then the whole class followed suit and lined up along the strip of windows to watch. The crowd had become a mob outside the gates. Over half of the teaching faculty yelled at the people shaking the fence. The entirety of the security team seemed to be pushing the people back with their bare hands. Bad idea. Some of them staggered away clutching at bleeding hands and shoulders. I saw the first one turn with my own eyes.

My eyes probably _did_ deceive me. Wouldn't be surprised since my vision has been blurry with the glasses on lately, however I could have sworn the figure hunched on the pathway leading to the school was the principal. Whoever the it was writhed on the field for about 30 seconds and every one of those was a year to me. I looked from Ivan to Kiku. I had hoped one of them has some sort of explanation. But no. Fuck knew what we were seeing.

And suddenly the guy's back on his feet. The people around his drew close in concern. He bit them. I could see that much. Bitten people were climbing to their feet all over the field, biting more people. Sometimes they pushed them to the ground and tore at their bodies, exposing for the class frozen in horror at the window what human anatomy looked like off the pages of a textbook. Kiku excused himself weakly to throw up in the trashcan and brought some measure of reality back to our situation. Ivan pulled us both out of the classroom pretty quickly. He took us along the corridor and knocked on the door of the classroom where Luddie, Berwald and Bella had their English lesson.

"Family emergency!" he told the teacher (I can't remember who it was) "Luddie's dad was hit by a car. Ber, it was your parents driving and Bella's mom was in the back seat."

"M'parents 'r' in St'ckholm."

"They were driving from the airport."

For some reason the teacher swallowed that shit. I'm guessing because the classroom had a view of the quad from their windows and what was going on in the quad was no better than what we saw on the field. We got all three of them out and were heading up to the next floor where Veneciano and Mei and a lot of others had their lessons when the first one stumbled into our path.

You know what, fuck it. Let's call them zombies. That's easier to say and accept.

One zombie in a boy's uniform stepped into our path. Their skin had this horrible grey sheen to it like all the blood had been recently drained. Their eyes were milky white, cataracts blooming even as we watched. It must have been recently turned because this zombie was rotting right in front of us. since the change had happened so recently it was easy to tell who the zombie had been. Im Song . He was Kiku's cousin.

Kiku stepped forward like he was going to try to talk to the zombie, persuade him to back down and convert to vegetarianism or something. Luddie took him back by the arm gently and shook his head. It was plain that Im Song was dead. Kiku stayed back while Ivan took the initiative again and spoke a few words. Im Song reacted by trying to bite his head off. So Ivan punched him in the side of the head and kicked him down the stairs. There was no crunch at the bottom and Ivan didn't follow it down to finish it off, so the chances that Im Song is one of the zombies hammering at the door are good.

After that horrible episode we-

One of the fists came through the door just now, I have to go and help.

Okay, if this is the first and last that's written in here, this was written by Alfred F Jones, the youngest twin of the set belonging to Francis and Mary Jones who live in Washington DC. They work at the Pentagon. My brother Matthew Williams who lives in Montreal.

In here with me there's Ivan Sasha Braginsky who lives in Moscow, who's never talked about his parents but I know his sisters Natalia Arlovskaya who lives in Minsk and Yekaterina Braginskaya who lives in Kiev.

Kiku Honda from Tokyo, whose sister Mei Yao is in this school somewhere too.

Ludwig Heinrich Beilschmidt from Berlin, the son of Emmerich Beilschmidt and youngest brother of Gilbert Beilschmidt who is missing in action and four other guys.

Bella Dubois from Brussels, an only child as far as I know. The last of us in here is-

One of them has got their heads through. I was right about Im Song being out there.

***gasp* uh-oh, sudden ending. Al couldn't stall any longer, he had to dash to help the others. I'm going to leave it up to the people to decide who they want to be the last character in the room, although I will say it must be a character who is originally male in the series and he can't be Sweden, Latvia, Switzerland, Italy, Sealand, Britain, France, Romano or China. I have plans for those boys *-* and I'm not accepting any non-canon guys or OCs either. (I'm sorry T-T I just don't do well with other people's OCs, and the non-canon guys are awkward to write)**

**You can ask for the nations/capitol/micro-nation you want to see battling zombies with the aforementioned others. Leave it in a review or PM me. If no one or not enough people vote I'm just gonna play the omnipotent author card and decide on my own. Oh and I promise whoever is voted in will stay alive for a long time. Well, that's it for me. Off I totter to write some more of another fic. Until we meet again dear readers.**


	2. Entry 2

**From readings the PMs, I have selected the final member of the current group in the Maths room. I'm gonna have fun writing this guy. Oh and PS I did totally make up the Jones' parents, because I think Arthur and Francis are actually their parents, FACE family style, so I had to invent some people. Sorry if that ticked you off. I also named their dad 'Francis' as a sort of, uh, tribute to the FACE? When Francis does eventually make his appearance in the story there will be much discussion about the shared name. Disclaimer goes here.**

Wed 26th, June '13

Still alive. Still alive. Ok, I'm still alive, but only by the grace of God and the surge of adrenaline that seized me when I saw the zombie's head (yeah I'm just gonna call it a zombie in this context). My legs were somehow steady enough to allow me to rush forward and kick the zombie's head back through the barricade. I told myself it was a soccer ball and kicked it to the goal. A big strong kick. I won the game. Then Bella stuffed another desk against the hole and that was that.

We freaked out and cried for a little while. Luddie, whom I've never seen progress beyond the level of jumping in shock in a genuine freak-out situation, assumed upright-foetal position in a corner for a full ten minutes and couldn't be persuaded to speak until he was slapped twice. So far everything he's said has been fragmented, barely coherent. Up to this point, I thought 'scared speechless' was just an expression. But hey, up to this point zombies were just baddies in video games.

Bella cried. She doesn't cry much, so she didn't break her habit. Just a couple of tears then she was at Kiku's arm comforting him. He has cried the longest out of all of us. I would have too if I'd had my cousin's reanimated corpse try to tear through a barricade to get at my flesh.

Ivan seems relatively cool. What a freak. How can he be handling this so well? He sits there calmly in the desk he uses in lessons, staring at the work surface. He doesn't wince at the nails screeching on the door, or flinch, or jump, or move. It's like he's shut himself off. Thrown an internal switch that allowed a retreat into the inner Ivan, where he might be having a sobbing fit. On the outside he doesn't even seem to be breathing. Weirdo. He'd better take his pills while we're shut up in here together.

Antonio paces up and down the room. Uuuuuup and dooooooown. Caged lion. He reminds me of a caged lion, like the one I saw in the London Zoo on my fourth birthday, listless and somehow busting with frantic energy at the same time. A wall-to-wall row of windows takes up the entire left wall of the room. A tiny voice at the back of my brain tells me he'll unhitch the lock and take a plunge if we have to stay in here much longer, and hell, I'd follow him. Oh I didn't have time to write him into the entry yesterday did I? Well he's alive. Antonio Carriedo a native of Madrid, Spain. I don't know who his parents are or if anyone outside of the school cares about his well-being. So if you're out there mysterious sponsor/friend/relation, he's alive. Pale as hell, a caged lion. Still alive though which is a plus.

Kiku is still red-eyed.

I wish I knew what to say to take the pain away. The zombies aren't outside anymore; they buggered off a long time ago, probably following another group of fleeing kids. But I can tell Im Song is still here, inside of Kiku. His memory. He will always be there I guess. Grief has a way of staying inside you. No matter how happily you can remember the person it hurts to think about them. I have a gist of how he feels. Grandad's accident feels like yesterday. Whatever caused Im Song to go gnashy-bitey happened today. I just don't know what to say. I don't know what to say to any of them.

I must be scared speechless too.

**Thanks for reading.**


	3. Entry 3

**You'll notice some inconsistencies in the names towards the end of the first chapter, where it refers to the zombie Kiku knows as both 'Kaoru' and 'Im Song'. For some reason the website has decided to be a little annoying slug and is preventing me from changing the name in the editing or even when I replace the chapters. And I also have to apologise for that AN I can't change which is babbling about some people I made up. I made no one up. Brain, what are you doing? This is why you should sleep in between writing chapters. Again, I apologise for the mistakes and confusion caused by them. repeat: IM SONG. Repeat: ARTHUR AND FRANCIS ARE THEIR PARENTS. I prostrate myself at your feet dear reader. Please kick me.**

**Disclaimer goes here.**

Thurs 27th June '13

It's 7:45 a.m. We're planning to go 'over the top' in less than an hour. The others are discussing the strategy to get out of the school in one piece. From the looks of stuff, that'll be extremely fucking difficult.

Sleep was totally absent from the Math room last night. First time all year. Heracles liked having a nap in a lot of the lessons, but he really went for it in Maths. He was a marathon sleeper, but I'll bet if he's still around right now he's not sleeping. Hell if he's around right now he and Sadie are probably stuck in a room with Mo or something and trying to murder each other. If those 3 guys are alive, they are together, Hera and Sadie are strangling each other and Mo looks on in exasperation. Whoa, whoa way off topic Alfred, get back to the subject.

Like I said no one slept at all last night, too busy talking. I didn't want to sleep. What if the doors were breached while I slept and I woke to dozens of teeth tearing into me? The idea of waking to someone I was taught by or taught with nom nom nom-ing away on my bones had the same effect as the six energy drinks I chugged in two minutes for a dare last spring, when my heart beat so fast I thought it might have stopped and I literally could not sleep for 56 hours. My heart didn't go so fast this time but sleep was entirely out of the question. The others must have been thinking along those lines because no one mentioned sleep.

Luddie was the first of us to start moving. He got out of his corner, stretched, checked the views out of all the windows (which Antonio hadn't gone near, thankfully) and reported the school ground to be swamped. By zombies. He stumbled over that part. Ivan popped out of his shell and joined him at the window. Antonio reminded me of a cart on track with his pacing. He didn't interrupt his track at all while the rest of us gathered around the window until I caught him by the collar and gave him a sort of one-armed hug. He relaxed a little after that.

Our conversation went something like this:

Bella: Jesus shit.  
Me: Hot damn!

Bella: I mean shit! This is insane!

Luddie: The grounds are swamped aren't they? I think I see someone alive running…

Ivan: It's the PE teacher.

Luddie: What's chasing him?

Ivan: Can't you see?

Luddie: I lost my contacts.  
Ivan: You need glasses?

Bella: Guys! Not the most pressing issue right now our fucking PE teacher is getting run down by-

And they caught him.

Kiku walked quite calmly from the window and threw up in the trash. He didn't come back. We watched the zombies for a while. They're like ants, ants that have forgotten they're part of a hive. An angry swarm, freed from group thought, stripped of purpose without their society, except for the one reason provided by a sole remaining instinct: eat. The strength of these bastards is incredible. Remember those gates I mentioned seeing the first behind? DE-stroyed. Torn to pieces of pointy steel by a thousand of those things looking for food. Last night, the streetlights showed us the zombies tearing away with revolting gusto at the bodies they brought down after the gates first came down. Those bodies are bones and the bits the zombies didn't like now. It's impossible to identify the bodies from the shredded uniforms, which have always been soul sucking-ly anonymous anyways, and we don't have to carry student ID cards here either. The dead all look the same. The _walking_ dead are still recognisable as we discovered from the Im Song. I haven't looked for anyone I know. My eyes skipped over the details I knew onto a stranger. I don't want to start my record of the dead yet.

We did our talking in the dark. There were some other classrooms far across the front of the school. All the lights were on and the zombies were moths to a candle. The barricade lasted maybe four minutes. The lights stayed on, so we could see the silhouettes rip each other to pieces. Luddie suggested we leave the lights off in case they attracted the zombies to us. So we did. I'll admit I was uncomfortable; I've never been the biggest fan of the dark. But the streetlight slanted in and we had some moonlight, all together enough to see each other by and negotiate our way across the room, unless you were Antonio who tripped over a chair then Kiku, ran into a wall twice and the blackboard three times.

This is our plan of attack: fashion some sort of sharp/blunt weapons from objects inside room ( going with the theory that the best way to kill a zombie is to destroy the brain because that's the control center for the motor functions, so thusly the brain is moving the body moving the nom nom nom-ing teeth, with thanks to Luddie for the science), take down the barricade, venture into the hallway, retreat using Bella for zombie bait if zombies attack or alternatively Ivan because he'll take longer to finish eating and increase escape time, reconstruct barrier and evaluate stratagem. If escape is successful proceed to lockers on the floor above to retrieve phones, call our families then police then army then the CIA then who the fuck knows might as well drop Jesus a call 'cuz we're in the shit without any help. Get out of the school possibly gaining fellow students or teachers, procure vehicle (driver's licence while we're at it), flee city, find safe-house, stock up on whatever and ride it out unless someone pulls a _deus ex machina_ outta their ass and lands us a helicopter lift to Area 51, an alien saucer with giant zombie-killing lasers, a dinosaur to ride through the masses of undead surely filling the city streets by now. Something like that please.

On the subject of weapons, Bella thinks it appropriate to carry a knife. A KNIFE CONCEALED IN HER BRA! MOST OF THE GIRLS I KNOW KEEP BOOBS OR PHONES IN THEIR BRA BUT NOT BELLA DUBIOS, ON NO THAT IS WAY TOO ORDINARY FOR HER! CAN YOU TELL I'M FREAKED OUT BY THIS? I know she's the daughter of the Belgian President or whatever they have over there, but a lot of kids in this school are the offspring of somebody with an important status in their home countries and as far as I know they don't have flip knives tucked into a secret pocket in left brazier cups…and Kiku has just admitted to me he has a _bokuto_/wooden sword in his locker, Luddie admits to wearing a gun holster during his summer holidays in case of kidnappers and Ivan apparently has once used a flamethrower. Ok I've been proved wrong. Here's me and Antonio with no track history with weapons, feeling like defenceless sillies. Yaaay. We're gonna die first.

Kiku mauled a broom for the metal staff part of it and I assume he'll be pulling a Buddhist monk style – no wait that's in China, he Japanese. Let me correct myself : karate with a broom stick/staff. Ivan's being normal for him, which is stranger than fiction for the rest of us. You might not believe me, but right now I'm watching him half in the ceiling via access from a gap where the panel he actually punched out of its frame was. God knows what the nutbag is doing up there. Here he comes… aaaaand he's got a pipe. A pipe. Ok, a pipe. Suits him for some reason.

He just said "We had better leave soon because I may or may not have accidentally flooded the ceiling." A water pipe apparently.

(Added at a later date, which is to say I put the book down for half a minute to accept my own water pipe)

I'm armed now. Heavy piece of pipe to crush skulls with. I think this calls for another yaaaaay because I'm going to be a zombie killer. Outside of video games. Christ it's all I can do not to piss my pants. Not like you could tell though because my pants are already soaked from that water pipe leaking. Bella is pulling the barrier down. Kiku tests the weight of the pipe in his hand and Ivan is suggesting a few pointers – and how the fuck does he know how to handle weapons like these is what I want to know. Antonio isn't much of a cage lion now, more of a scared kitten. He's always had the brightest smile. That smile is back, nervous, but back. The familiarity is comforting, 'cuz every time I've seen that smile, it's been alright. Before tests, big sports games, medical tests which have a nasty habit of bringing on panic attacks due to needles and darkness, my two big fears. Antonio smiles, it'll end up alright. He smiles at me because he wonders why I'm bothering to record the events we have experienced up to this point.

'cuz Tony, since you're telling me it's going to be alright, it won't hurt to tell whoever else reads this book it will be alright too.

Barricade down, doors open. The hall is empty. Ivan and Bella won't have to be zombie bait yet. Gotta go now. One more reminder to myself: it's gonna be alright.

**Oooh I feel so bad about those mistakes. I'm sorry it ruins the flow of the story. Aaagh. I'll be way more careful about these things in the future. Lots of blood and guts and gore and swearing in the next few entries. I'm not great at writing action. You have been warned.**


	4. Entry 4

**A heads up for the followers: I have a busy schedule ahead of me, so I may not be able to update very regularly. Living in Britain, I have only a 6 week summer, which will be reduced to 2 if Gove gets his foul way, and the teachers just love to load up their academic trebuchets and launch everything they've got at us. **

**Oh look I can see a little disclaimer over there in the distance.**

8:25 a.m.

It's still Thursday. Miraculously, we're all alive and unbitten.

When we opened the doors the hall was empty, straight back to the end of the hall and the two corridors branching off of it. No population aside from us. I think I came out expecting to see Mo and the squabbling additions waiting for us in the next room with pipes of their own. Of course they weren't there. The other rooms were empty of living people. I could see smears of gore attached to hands and feet without shoes. I didn't know the human body contained so much blood. Gallons of red stuff and I didn't know red could be so…red. The reddest red in crusts dried on the floor.

What I saw were only flashes through the windows (most of those were red too) and the open doors as I ran past, but it was enough to make bile climb up the back of my throat. It's a wonder no one threw up. And it's a wonder no zombies had hung around to pick the last scraps of flesh off the bones.

A ruckus of groans and growls and the occasional scream echoed from the upper and lower floors. The six of us needed to be up one floor. I was the quietest I have ever been. Quieter than sleep (easy to do since I talk in my sleep).

We were all quiet. Our footsteps made noises too soft to be heard in all the noise around us, or they made no noise at all. Like ghosts. We were like ghosts darting past the corpses of our friends; a flicker of reflection in the shattered windows, the heel of a shoe disappearing around a corner, a sharp intake of breath, the taker of which was gone when someone looked. What was that word Golding loves so much in '_Lord of the Flies'_? Furtive. We were very furtive. A lion sneaking away from his cage because he had tired of pacing.

We found the first body we were able to identify belonged to a girl Antonio used to sit next to in French. She was named Rosie Mackintosh. She was a pretty girl until you reached her waist, where her body ended abruptly. I couldn't see her lower half and I didn't look for it. The blood must have come out of her fast. It had flowed down the stairs like a brook. A sock lay alone in the blood, red all the way through. Impossible to tell if it was hers.

Her eyes were the worst part. They were open and frozen in terror that matched the gape her mouth was set at. It looked like she died trying to scream, but never finished. They were no longer pretty. They weren't even blue anymore. They were just glassy and dead.

I had the idea that someone should shut her eyes.

It's done all the time in films and books. It's a beautiful moment. The hero leans down to shut the eyes of someone they love who has just died tragically, romantically, violently, selflessly, willingly, without regrets blah blah blah…they'll be sobbing over the dead guy's last words, words that are going to echo in their head later and motivate them to finally defeat the villain and achieve a happy ending. But in real life it's just…just…no.

There was no beauty. Rosie never passed on any last wisdom except for the scream that died on her lips. She wasn't pretty or tragic or romantic and I'm never going to know if she died selflessly or without regrets, but I can sure as hell say it was violent, unwillingly and she regretted being caught and halved. She wasn't Rosie. She wasn't a she, _she_ was a chunk of meat on the stairs that was beginning to smell. I thought about closing her eyes for a second then hurried quietly past.

We've paused on the landing to take a breath and steel ourselves for the violence we can clearly hear on the other side of the door. Rosie is two staircases below. Through the gaps in the banister, I can see she is still staring.

Have to go now. Time to go over the top. Again.

**Sorry for the short entry. I'll try to write a longer one next time. Reviews appreciated! *head hits desk*  
*goes to sleep***


	5. Entry 5

**Summer colds. They should not be allowed to exist. I don't own Hetalia or any of the other references that appear in this fic. *dies***

9:50

Do you know what it feels like to have not eaten for two days? God it's horrible. Not only do I miss Veneciano Vargas for his cheerful disposition and enormous sentimental value as a long-time friend, but he always had food on him. He stored food in secret hidey-holes all over the place. One day a whole watermelon fell out of his pocket. I still don't know how he kept it in there without anybody noticing. I miss the little raccoon.

We did have water though. The class that has Homeroom in the Math room was going on a field trip in the afternoon and they'd left a whole crate of water bottles to keep the ninth grader monkeys hydrated pushed against the floor. We'd drunk all but five of them by the time we finally went over the top. Those five are spread out between the pockets of our jackets. I wish one of them were a watermelon.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention: we're at the lockers now. Luckily, we hadn't had lunch when the disaster struck…hey I totally forgot to finish writing about that. I'll have to get back to that soon before I block it out because of the massive trauma I associate with it! Whoo jeez, I sound like Ivan. I have GOT to get away from that guy! Anyways I remembered I had food in my locker so I almost dove through the door. My hands were shaking with shock, horror, terror and eagerness to GET MY FUCKING LUNCH AND FUCKING EEEEAAAAAAATTTTTTT!

Taking pity on me like the saviour he is, Luddie removed my hands from the combination thingie and did it for me. You'd think I would have lost my appetite like Kiku and the Ludster, but not so. I told myself it was a zombie film I walked through to get here then ate my food in a way that made Antonio's appetite to go soaring south even though he was just as hungry as I was.

I write this digesting what I scoffed while the others are destroying their lunches. What is it with Dubois and fruit? Looks like she stuffed a whole orchard in her bag. Ha! Listen to me I'm all happy and satisfied now that I've eaten. I literally have no excuse to be so stupidly happy about eating when the eviscerated corpses of the people I knew and was fond of, I should be spewing everywhere and on everyone (with Ivan in the direct line of fire) in my terror. And yet I'm still hungry.

Oh yeah, I should be explaining how we made it here. Surprisingly easily.

We waited on the landing for a good ten minutes trying to figure out if the groaning were just echoes or if there was a whole crowd of them standing around in the hall out of sight roaring their lungs out.

Dubois suggested we do that trick Hermione pulled with the mirror in the Chamber of Secrets, you know using the mirror to look around corners, than Luddie pointed out if there were some zombies we'd notice sharpish because they'd bite her hand off. Then she suggested sticking a hand mirror she kept in her pocket (most girls use it to check their make-up but not Dubois, she uses it to check zombies) on the end of one of the pipes with duct tape (I tripped over a roll earlier) and check, then Luddie the destroyer of dreams pointed out they would notice that too, then Kiku chipped in with "we don't know what sense these 'zombies' retain, they might not be able to see anymore" and the whole group goes off into this whispered debate. You'd think we were in a freaking R.E. lesson again.

I stood to the side for a while, thoughts on a hungry stomach and my parents. Dear old Dad and Papa. I was named after Papa, my middle name, at Dad's insistence. 'Francis'. Francis senior and I agree 'Alfred Francis' isn't the best of names, but try arguing with my Dad. Once he sets his mind to something he gets it done and I'm sure he's set it to survival mode. He and Papa are definitely still alive. Probably king of the fricking zombies too.

It was this thought that made me step quietly out into the hall. If my dads are ruling the zombies in Canada with my little bro I should be ruling the zombies at Gakuen High School in, in…fuck me what state are we in? One sec. Ok I asked Luddie and he said Maine. Prince of Maine, that's me.

There was nothing in the hall but me. Took the others a moment to notice. By that time I was already half way down the hall. In my head this scene totally looked like a cowboy in slow-mo going to meet his enemy at the high noon showdown. Then Ivan's obnoxious accent broke my dream: "Hey guys, Al's committing suicide."

I glances back at this point and they were all staring after me. I could have taken the opportunity to say a cool line, you know, make an impression as an awesome hero, but my mouth acted independently of my brain: "what now bitches?"

WHY GOD. WHY DO YOU CURSE ME WITH SUCH IDIOCY? KIKU WAS WATCHING THAT. HE KNOWS I'M EVEN MORE OF AN OAF THAN HE THOUGHT BEFORE.

Long story short I led the way to the lockers through another zombie free corridor - free also of familiar _live_ faces, a few corpses we vaguely knew. No one immediately close to our hearts. Actually I'll admit I was kinda glad to see the Principal's gnawed-on body spread eagled in one of the classrooms.

While we've been sitting around to catch our breath, change out of our uniforms into the spare clothes in our bags, try the numbers on our phones, retrieve _bokuto_s , store knives in safer places, eat, get our stuff out and take a moment to assess the situation. Maybe I should explain about the weapons.

Gakuen isn't an ordinary school. You mighta guessed that from the huge range of nationalities. In some American schools you'd be lucky to find half a dozen black kids and here we've got Japanese, Belgians, Russians, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Latvians, Spanish (not Latino Spanish, Madrid Spanish), Austrians, Hungarians, Estonians and pretty much every other nationality on the face of the planet. In this school the future world leaders are educated, trained and conditioned for their roles as the heads of states or figures of extreme importance in their home nations. In lessons we're asked to call each other by the names of our nations because anonymity is a vital policy here, although we are encouraged to socialise, as there will be less chance of international war and chaos if the people who essentially control the nations have been friends from kindergarten . That's the idea at any rate, but I must say America, me, still feels like kicking Russia, Ivan, up the ass.

Added to the nations we have a student representing the capitols of each country and a few major cities. The girl Rosie was raised to be the representative for Canada I think. We were going to be put in a lot of the same lessons next year to make us closer friends/colleagues or whatever, because our nations share a huge border. The school already ensured me and Kiku, who is Japan, had a chance to be close. They tried it with Ivan. But we hate each other's' guts, in a friendly, sorta rival way. I'm better than him at everything by the way- especially at looking normal. Violet-eyed white-haired 6ft 2" freak…

Back to the subject at hand, we 'nations' are trained in a particular area that should become our expertise, something we are so good at we should win all the available prizes and be the utter best in our field, so if we're not made the head of state we are hired by them to be the expert in whatever the hell it is that we do. I'm going to be the President someday. Well I was. I don't know if America still exists as a country. Might just be a bunch of people running away from zombies and crazy government purges. I don't know, it's been like 4 days since the shit hit the fan, but I don't know if it's a global fan or the fan of the State of Maine. All the crazy shit happens in Maine, as Stephen King tells us.

Lemme think…we have Luddie who will be a physicist/engineer one day (he is a literal genius at Math and Physics with an IQ of 185 the last time it was tested, which is insanely high, I'm surprised his head isn't swollen up like Gallaxhar from MVA), Kiku will be an engineer/politician on the side, his older sister, half Chinese like he is and raised for China, is gonna be a military high-up, and of course so is Mr Physco man (Ivan). Haven't the foggiest what Antonio, that's Spain, will be. He's got an ass like a bullfighter though. And as for Dubois? Fuck knows. She might be the Belgian Queen, President, Premier, I don't know what Belgians have for their president.

Well that's what we were going to be. If the world outside is still a world people are going to send some help for us. They should have by now as we're one of the most valuable political resources in global possession. What's left of us at any rate; as far as I know what's left of the 'nations' is gathered around a handful of lockers trying to call their far-away parents. The rest of them probably charged off into the fray like Berwald, the brave Ox. He went to help the littles. Since he hasn't been back I guess he died with them, unless they're barricaded in the kiddie Math room. HA! That cheered me up! The image of Berwald trapped in a room with a bunch of preteens. If the zombies don't kill him he'll kill himself. Basically when we left the room and had collected the others, he just ran off down the hall yelling "I'm gonna help th' k'ds." Wish I'd hugged him or patted him on the back or told him he was the best Swede on the face of the earth or something for him to remember me well by, instead of "What did you say?"

I AM A BUFFOON.

I need to sleep. I do not care if it is a ten minute nap on the floor, I need a nap now, immediately, because I haven't slept since it started, and I'm jealous of Antonio who's having a nap on Bella's shoulder. I lay claim to the other shoulder. Good night. See you later- and that's a promise.

**Sorry for the length, but I'm about 14 hours away from a month long trip to the States. This marks the beginning of my summer hiatus. Sorry again guys, and if you're still reading this after I get back in about a month, then I genuinely love you. Have a nice summer!**


	6. Entry 6

**I have returned. Ah, it feels good to be home again. I love my holidays and everything, but the conservative Deep South in not exactly the place for a life-long Liberal to be. I have to apologise for the colossal delay between chapters and my general inactivity over the past couple of weeks, and I promise that I will try to be much more regular with the updates, say one per week. It will be hard to considering I'm entering my last year of secondary school. Meh. I'll do it for you. So anyways, back to the story. I don't own Hetalia.**

10:30 p.m. (same day)

We're safe. I actually can't believe it, but we're safe. I'm still too wired to sleep. Earlier I could barely keep my eyes open and now I can barely close them long enough to blink. Absolutely no idea what's wrong with me. Maybe adrenaline takes a long time to wear off if you've been flooded with it as constantly as we were for the last couple of days.

I can't believe it. I'm back in the dorm I slept in before the craziness. It's exactly like I left it, except some people aren't here. Our stuff is all where we left it, clothes folded up on top of dressers, books stacked against the wall, personal effects on nightstands and even the dorm cat. With Ven gone, it has adopted Luddie as her temporary human. He doesn't mind.

The others are sacked out. Antonio looks dead when he sleeps. A couple of times people passing his bunk paused and made sure he wasn't. Kiku has fallen asleep and woken up a couple of times. Each time he looks around the room, remembers he's ok then conks out again almost immediately. Luddie is asleep peacefully, the cat curled up in the crook of his knees. Ivan is a 6 foot lump under the covers. Bella is in hers and Mei's own dorm, presumably asleep.

One of the things I notice that is off about my dorm is the lack of the snoring. Ven is a big snorer. And Berwald's bed is unoccupied. His is right next to mine. I can't help but look over at the empty blankets every few minutes, then my throat closes up and I dizzy like a panic attack is coming so I have to ignore it.

This is what happened.

The nap didn't last long enough for dreams, just long enough for me to feel slightly recharged when I was woken up. I don't know what my dreams would have been about if I had had any. My family probably. No one knew what we should do next. We had achieved the goal to reach the lockers. We had figured out our phones weren't going to work. We had eaten a little. We had changed clothes. What next? Find other survivors? Search for a means of rescue or escape? Relocate to a safer area and try to sleep? The last option was definitely out; adrenaline had us bouncing off the walls.

I started to hear the zombie groaning drumming up again.

Once Luddie heard that he shushed us. For a moment after we shut up collectively, the groaning stopped.

"Try talking again." he said "Not too loudly, the same volume as before."

"Talk about what?" I said. Right on cue the zombies groaned.

"Isn't that strange? They only vocalise when they hear us talking. Listen the school building is almost completely silent. They aren't making noise until we make noise loud enough to carry. Remember the trip down here? We were almost totally silent and nothing bothered us. Since we left we haven't seen a single one of the, the…things that trapped us in the room, and that may be because we've been very quiet." he said something along those lines in a whisper. "I'm not sure if this will work, but if we're totally silent we might be able to get past them without them noticing us."

Insert amazed pause here. Luddie's genius is usually restricted to mathematics, which is why he has to go through normal school with the average- intelligence teenagers, even if he gets MIT level math books, but he can apply it to basic intelligent reasoning too apparently. (Now that I think it over we don't go to a normal school…whatever the point is he earns his title of 'Luddie the genius'. I wonder if I should make him a sash. So far his conjecture has held up.) At that moment we had no reason to think he was wrong. His advice was followed and we were undisturbed.

Back on subject, the group deliberated in whispers for a while. No conclusion. I blanked out on Bella's shoulder at regular intervals, so I wasn't entirely sure what was being said. However, I perked up when I heard Bella suggest someone scout ahead.

"You want us to split up and search for clues?" said Ivan a little dryly. Then he rubbed his eyes tiredly "Sorry Bella, I'm a little irritable right now. I don't think it's a good idea to divide. What if the scouts find a safe zone but have no way of bringing the rest of us to it? Whatever we discover I would prefer we do it together."

"I think Ivan's right." Antonio said and the rest of us were quick to agree.

"Where do we go this time?" I asked.

"Going to the rooftop wouldn't be the best course of action; a lot of students probably gathered on the rooftop in hopes of an airlift recuse. Odds are a lot of them (Luddie interrupted his speech for a nod in the direction the groans came from) followed. There may be a few living people on the roof if they managed to find a sufficient water source, but odds are they're all dead. We don't want to come up against a, a horde of the things in such poor condition." he had this harassed look in his eyes he gets during the tests. You can tell his brain is scrambling to cover every required subject in as much detail as possible. I have learned not to mess with him when this look. Plus what he said made a lot of sense.

Eventually we settled on the dorms. I've done enough late-night snack raids to appreciate how close the cafeteria and kitchen are to the dorms and I can run the trip back like a pro. Assuming we stuck to one dorm, the location would be easy to defend as well. There's a staircase that comes up from the large hall where we pick up our daily timetables- I guess you could call it the Great hall of the World Academy- and two staircases which branch off from it in opposite directions: the boys on the left, the girls on the right.

We had no idea what the hall and dorm area might look like since we were in an entirely different wing of the school. But we couldn't stay by the lockers for the rest of our lives. How would we hide if something came by? Stuff ourselves inside them? Might work for little Bella and slim Antonio and tiny Kiku, and I have personally stuffed Luddie in his locker this year (don't ask) but how the heck are me and Ivan going to fit in them? We're big guys...this was an actual part of the discussion. Don't judge us. We're teenagers.

The dorms became our goal.

The part of the school we were in earlier was the Math and Science department -or 'Luddie's playground'- which is at the very end of the Western wing. The dorms are at the extreme end of the East wing. Basically we were as far from our goal as it was possible to be without leaving the building. That by the way will be out of the question for a long time; it's a sea of zombies from the entrance to the edges of the football field.

I'll omit the trip. Nothing interesting, except that the group stayed quiet on Luddie's advice and it worked. Once we went past some classrooms with zombies standing in them (walking repeatedly into the wall, gnawing on the desks, picking over the last bits of whoever they brought down in the first moments of the infestation, not doing anything). We might have been invisible and noiseless creatures for all I knew. I wanted to pause and do a little dance in a zombie's face.

I didn't because that would be amazingly dumb even for me, but being completely ignored by these things was kind of weird…it's hard to explain. The way they chased us earlier, so determined to run us down a strip up to the bone, the way they were dangerously alert of our presence made me feel equally as aware of my warm body and beating blood. Made me feel alive in a scary way. When they ignored me I felt like I had died and become a ghost without my noticing. For a moment I actually held my pipe over a window I could see four zombies through, I was gonna rap it, than Kiku tapped my shoulder. Guess he thought I was frozen in terror. Well I'm glad he did otherwise I would have brought a whole bunch of zombies down on our heads. Having Kiku tap me on the shoulder wasn't as much of a wake-up call as being chased for my flesh, but at least he brought me out of the crazy moment. I'm not a ghost. I'm not dead yet.

Like a B-movie horror set, there was a liberal splashing of blood everywhere. There couldn't have been more if someone had spun around holding an open bucket of red paint. Antonio nearly went down in a slick of blood on one set of stairs but Bella and Ivan caught him. That particular smear continued all the way down the stairs and under a door on the landing not shut tightly enough. Ryan Fields-some guy on the football team with me. He was going to be the head of an American state, one of the Dakotas. I can't remember if it was North or South. I should start a list of the dead otherwise I might not remember who is.

I'm going to skip past the gory details of our trip across the school. All you need to know about really, is our meeting with Security.

Security is what the name suggests: an organisation that protects the students and teachers of the school. Men and women with big guns and protective equipment who used to be the bodyguards of VIPs then became the guardians of VIPs to be. This school may not be public knowledge, but plenty of physcotic anarchists and extremists find their way to the school. The few who get past the check points, the guards, the electric fence and the numerous patrolling guards might get into a classroom and cause some disruption. The worst case I have ever experience was the time some skinhead got onto the football field during a game, grabbed Sadik out of the bleachers and was immediately kicked, head-butted, elbowed, bitten and scratched on every patch of exposed flesh. We were nine years old then. If I remember correctly the guy lost two teeth and an eye, and that was before the guards got to him.

Security is a comfort to have around even if they're tyrants about personal security. And they definitely were a comfort when we reached the hall and saw them stood around a make-shift barricade in front of the East wing entrance. Long story short, we were greeted, checked thoroughly for signs of the infection (apparently passed by bites, because that's what they looked for), given the all-clear, sent through and had a couple of happy reunions with some of our other classmates who are here.

Let me think…there's Feliks, Tino, Matthias, Lukas, Emil, Carter, Yisrael, Claude, Klaus, Hector, Mei (Ivan's girlfriend, cue the gross kissing, and the bear hug from her brother Kiku), Raivis, Vlad, Marichka, Toris, Eduard, Mo, Heracles, Sadik (I knew he would be fine), Valkien, Blythe, Morgan, James, Ahmet and a whole mess of other people.

The ones who we're missing most painfully: Elizabeta, Roderich, Berwald, Peter and the rest of the kids, Lili and Vash (Luddie's close cousins) and a whole bunch of other people. Not just the nations, the guys who I hang around with the most, but the provinces and the states and the counties and the capital cities and the islands. We have a number close to 2000 at any given time. If I were to do a rough count, I'd guess we students are only about 150 strong.

So many of us are gone. These are people I was raised to know and love. Over half of them are dead now.

What are we supposed to do? Well this place is equipped with what seems like a small hospital with trained professionals, a real small army and a not-so-small arsenal, a well-stocked kitchen and storeroom, staff to take care of us students, who are all trained extensively in self-defence. The school is far out in the wilderness of the Maine forests. It's designed to survive a siege. If we're not experiencing a siege right now I don't know what to call it.

Scary.

Bella and Mei came into the room just as I wrote that last word. Both of them had their pillows and a blanket. I was the only one awake at the time.

"The dorm is empty. We're the only ones in there," she paused but I knew what she was getting at.

"Pull up a mattress." I said.

Mei shifted Kiku over and got under the covers with him. He didn't wake up this time. He tucked his head under her arm, cuddling up to his sister. Bella got into Berwald's bed.

She whispered: "We couldn't stand the silence. There are too many empty beds in our dorm."

I said: "More of the girls will show up. Until you're comfortable again you can stay here. The guys won't mind."

She smiled and closed her eyes, but I don't think she's asleep yet. It will be a long time before I am.


	7. Entry 7

**So much to do, so little time and/or motivation. I think the human race would become better as a whole if we evolved the ability to store and access a mental bank of motivational posters to give ourselves a burst of inspiration whenever we begin to feel our will waver. In fact, it should be a defence mechanism. Someone calls you ugly? Never mind, just think up a poster of a baby laughing with the caption 'biach pls', then it's hard to give a crap about anything. Someone say something stupid? Sceptical dog! See where I'm going with this thing?  
(I don't own Hetalia. If I did Japan would have a robotic arm. And I don't own the names of the musical artists, albums and other materials mentioned along those lines at all. All original works belong to their creators. Copyright and such.)**

Saturday 30th

The other guys didn't mind having the girls in the dorm when they woke up. Yesterday when we finally split up for bed, we were kind of reluctant to let Bella out of our sight. Mei too. It was as if the second they were gone they would disappear and no amount of searching could ever find them again. Ivan was so relived to find Mei one bed over I felt an actual twinge in my chest. The heartstrings being tugged.

We sat around in our beds for a while. Turns out we slept through an entire day and well into the afternoon of the next. The funny thing is the way we were all asleep for almost exactly as long, until Kiku's alarm clock screamed to life. He must have messed with it in his sleep. In his sleep he tries to check his texts, so he must have changed his alarm clock then. At first it was a nice soft Japanese lullaby, than it was "YAAAAAAASHIIIIIIIIIIIII-!" which worked on us sleepers like a bucket of ice water.

For a moment I thought we were under attack so I grabbed the knife under my pillow I sneaked from the kitchen when we were fed and swiped it around me.  
Mei reached calmly around her brother, who always sleeps through his alarm, turned it off and said "Back to bed everyone. False alarm."  
(Side note: Kiku actually wakes everyone up with his alarm clock but himself. He trusts us to be his alarm clock. He has this song he always sets it to, a Japanese artist named Akiakane with a great voice. The song he uses starts out soft and lovely and whispery, then it explodes into this unbelievable scream. Interrupts my dreams every weekday morning and a lot of the weekends. The standard operation is to have Ivan reach over to Kiku's night table with his long arms and turn off the phone while Luddie drags Kiku out of bed by the ankles.)

"Too late. I'm awake." Luddie sat up and played with the cat's ears. Bella stirred, flipped on her side, sneezed twice and curled up into a ball under her blanket. She has always been the slowest riser in the mornings, even worse than Antonio and he's lazy as the cat. I haven't ever gone into the girls' dorm early enough in the mornings to see the vampires rising from their coffins, but lemme just say, those commercials where the lady gets off the bed in perfect condition are total bull. Then again watching Berwald roll off his mattress every morning is no joy either. He doesn't even get up he just slips slowly over the edge of the bed and trusts the fall to bump him completely awake. I amused myself for a minute with the image of Teddy Ber and Waffles slumping off a shared bed in opposite directions. The struggle out of bed was agony. Ivan helped it along by saying "Guess what guys? We slept for an entire day and a half."

I was totally ravenous. You know that feeling you have when it's like someone took an ice cream scoop and hollowed your stomach out? Had that. But I didn't want to go down unless I had my group. My group? Yeah ok, my group, these people are officially now my people. This is my team I guess. Don't have a reason to leave them. I hope I won't be given one.

About twelve minutes after the stirring began a member of the Matron staff poked her head around the door. If she was shocked to see the girls and the boys sharing a room she didn't say it.

"Glad to see you kids are up. I checked in earlier and you were all slumped around the place like a bunch of kittens, warmed my head it did, so I decided I would let you sleep for a spell longer."

The woman is named Gonzales. She's a long-time member of the Matron staff, who are essentially a nosey force of nannies kept around to make sure the boys and girls, or boys and boys or girls and girls, don't get up to any hanky-panky. They also enforce the curfews and the dorms' hygiene standards. I got my ass busted a couple times by the Matrons for items as minor as a sock on the floor….okay it was stuck to the ceiling with a spit-ball, but c'mon it's only a sock!

I guess the Matron staff must have been in their quarters a couple of floors down from the dorms, because later when we were walking around I counted at least 13 of them. Originally there were 25. Hopefully I just missed the other 12.

Matron Gonzales told us we were free to wander around for now. Later we might be called up to help. She said Security plans to call the remainder of the school, whoever's made it here at least, to talk about the situation. She's sure we'll "rise to the challenge splendidly". Rise to the challenge? She must mean we're going to be expected to help with our areas of expertise. The basic self-defence and weapon handling can only go so far though, what else can I do? It's all well and good for people with practical skills like Luddie with his mechanics and Kiku with his _kantana_ but what can I do? Negotiate with the zombies? That sounds like a great idea. I'll organise a treaty. In exchange for the safety of the people, we will sacrifice one of our own at the beginning of each solstice. I made a list of people who I think we can afford to lose.

Ivan Braginsky

Ivan Braginsky

Ivan Braginsky

Ivan Braginsky

At the turn of the season we'll cut off one of his limbs and toss it to the zombies. That should hold them off until next summer. Maybe this time next year I'll be feeling generous and throw his torso out the door too along with the usual limb. After that I'm stumped. Ha ha, 'stumped'. See what I did there?

Just joking of course. I wouldn't throw anybody to the zombies no matter how annoying they are. At least he's as useless as I am. His speciality is sociology. You never know though, he could whip up a census pretty fast of who is here. Whenever the late (whoop!) Principal needed a questionnaire circulating the responsibility would fall to Ivan to get it out there. He's good at that type of thing. And sparring. If he's still around when you're reading this, never ever ever ever let him get you pinned on the sparring mat because he will sit on you and it will be impossible to get up without help or surrender.

Today was devoted to counting who was safe and who wasn't here. I already listed most of the people who are my circle of close friends. We know Im Song is dead. Mei was surprised when Kiku brought it up, but only because she thought she was going to have to tell him. She saw him get bitten and later succumb to the bite. They went off together for a little while. When they came back it didn't look like either of them had been crying, so I have no idea what they were talking about.

By splitting off into pairs (I was with Antonio) we managed to put together a list of who is here.

So far these are the people who are missing and not confirmed dead:

Veneciano Vargas (the nation Italy)

Elizabeta Hédeváry (the nation Hungary)

Giovanni Vargas(the micro-nation Seborga and Ven's close cousin)

Asal Amirkhani (the nation Iran)

Oscar Kirkland (the nation Australia, no relation to my dad Arthur Kirkland)

Roderich Edelstein (the nation Austria)

Berwald Oxenstierna (the nation Sweden)

Aleksander Nijinsky (the capitol Moscow, which Ivan was sad about)

Lili Zwingili (the nation Liechtenstein)

Vash Zwingili (the nation Switzerland)

Peter Baron (the self-proclaimed nation Sealand)

Audrey (the micro-nation Wy whose last name I can never remember)

Ruby Swatkins (the city of province of Cornwall, England)

Maya Mark (the state of Rhode Island)

Alejandro Cabrera (the nation of Mexico)

Alastair Mackenzie (the nation of Scotland)

That's only a sample of the people missing in action. I listed the people I knew the best out of the people absent.

There's this nasty feeling in my gut. This list is going to grow faster than it will shrink. And I'll have to start that list of the dead.

Im Song Yoo (the nation of South Korea).

And counting.

**a/n I don't feel good about that ending. Too forced, it cut off in the middle of a thought, but hey diaries do that anyways. Al probably had to go to the bathroom and forgot about the entry. I would like to throw in a quick explainer here: I changed Peter's surname from Kirkland to Baron because in this fic he and Arthur Kirkland are not related. 'Baron' came from the barons that are currently running Sealand. Audrey/Wy has a surname, but it will be revealed at a later date. Once again, thank you for reading and I hope to see you at the next update.**

**Yes. I can see you. I'm watching you right now. No, no that's not breath on the back of your neck, I promise.**


	8. Entry 8

2:45 a.m. Sunday

I cannot describe how confused I am right now. So many things have happened.

First off, it turns out that Carter Holowitz had a bite that had somehow slipped under the radar. His dorm-mates had said he said he was feeling queasy so he went to the sick bay to get something to settle his stomach. An hour later Ahmet heard a scuffling noise behind a closet door on the way back from the bathroom. He ran for Security, who busted down the door and found Carter eating the body of Matron James. He was quickly dispatched along with Matron James. She was unconscious and close to death as he ate her, but she was still alive. We heard the two gunshots through the floor; the states and provinces have dorms a floor down from us and the sound of the gunshots were enough to rouse everybody. Luddie was concerned we had had a breach in the perimeter Security set up around the East wing, so took his gun out of his night table and checked the hall way. A few doors down the other boys were coming out. After a brief talk, he and Heracles went downstairs to investigate the problem.

Eventually, Luddie, Heracles and I went downstairs to investigate. Going down that staircase in the half light, not knowing what was in front of us but knowing very well what it might be, was possibly the scariest thing to happen so far.

The scene we saw was as you can imagine it from the earlier description. Nasty, disturbing, nightmare material. Three of the Security personnel were gathered around the open closet. Ahmet faced the wall opposite them. He refused to look at the closet when Luddie took him back to his own dorm. The expression on his face was like that blank, flat sort of dull look I saw on soldiers' faces so many times during History. (They loved showing us pictures of war in History.) I hope he gets over this as soon as he can.

News spread like wildfire in the school before the zombies. It spread even faster than before, partly because the school is way smaller now and partly because as soon as Security had filled us in, Heracles shot upstairs and told everyone what had happened. By the time I got back to the dorm the hall was full up of people babbling about it, the boys from this corridor and the girls from across the landing. A Matron eventually sent us back to our dorms, reassuring us everything was fine as we were protected by Security.

"They obviously did worlds of good for Carter and Matron James." I heard Heracles say.

Sunday 12th (later)

I scribbled that last entry in three minutes. Almost feel asleep right on it. I started to re-read the last entry and ended up reading it all the backwards to the start. The dates are totally fucked. The first one, January, was way off and so are the entries under June. The first screw-up must have been the panic attack – I can get so confused after those it goes from funny (ha ha Alfred forgot how to tie his shoe lace) to scary (uh-oh Alfred forgot his own name). The other ones? It must have been sleep deprivation and hunger. Today is actually the 12th of March 2013. Just wanted to clear that up. When I re-read my other entries, I noticed how disjointed and weird what I wrote sounds like. You can tell how much this whole thing has screwed with my mind.

I think I've had my mental slap in the face. I promise I'm going to make more sense from now on. I did get a real slap in the face too from Hera.

It was after the Carter incident, we were going upstairs and I stopped in the middle. Didn't want to go up didn't want to go down, didn't want to do anything but curl up and die. Must have shown on my face, because Hera gave me a good swat across it. Not even a swat- an actual punch in the jaw. If he had wanted to do damage with that punch he could have sent me all the way back downstairs. Heracles usually just sits around in his own little world, occasionally falling asleep on people or having a mild identity crisis where he thinks he's a cat or musing about the meaning of life like the lazy Plato he is. I haven't seen him whack anyone apart from Sadik- who always whacks him back. I was too surprised to retaliate.

"Quit it." he said.

I rubbed my stinging face "Quit what?"  
"Quit doing that. You keep spacing out. It's not like you."

"So what? I don't think I should be acting totally like myself in this sorta thing Hera!"

"Yeah you should. You're always yelling about being the hero, so act like one for fuck's sake."

Then he turned around and dragged me by the collar the rest of the way up. Hera rarely swears, because swearing requires energy and he refuses to use more energy than he needs to move, do his work, digest and fall asleep. Sometimes he doesn't even wait to get to his dorm to fall asleep. On those days we draw straws to decide who has to carry him back (him being utterly impossible to wake up unless he wants to). It goes to show what this is doing to us. It's brought out the beast in Hera and sent mine cowering in the corner.

There was no 'talk' today. No one did anything today. We just took stock of who was there and who wasn't like we have been since being 'rescued' by Security. People placed bets on who was going to turn up alive and who was going to be groaning at the perimeter. Whatever Security and the Matrons are doing to get us organised they're not doing it fast enough.

Sick of sitting around. Sick of the noise. Sick of not knowing. Sick of knowing. Sick of being here. Dunno if I can do this. Or if I want to.

**a/n promised myself I wasn't going to write an intelligence-insulting message like this, but I feel like I owe it to the readers who noticed the mistakes. No I'm not saying you're a dumb audience! Ugh, that's right Scrolls, dig yourself a grave. Will someone get the shovel away from me please? These mistakes throughout the fic, such as the inconsistencies in dates and the way Al's narration was fragment and bouncing all over the place are intentional mistakes. I wanted to use them to show how confused he is and how his thought process is far from functioning normally. I hope they've created that effect instead of annoying people. Thanks for your time and patience with the implanted mistakes, which you have certainly have if you're up to this point. Until we meet again friend.**


	9. Entry 9

**Fun fact about this week's entry: someone is arriving. This person is like a steel column; impossible to shift and it hurts like hell when you run into them. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia. And this depresses me.**

Monday 14th March 2013

Happy right now. Happier than I have been since we got here. Seriously, I ran around the halls making airplane noises, one of the dumb things I used to do before the zombies came and I AM SOOO RELIEVED. We all were. Today a group of us made it to the perimeter.

Guess who it was.

Berwald Oxenstierna, Lili Zwingili, Peter Baron, Audrey what's-her-face and Giovanni Vargas. They arrived early in the morning at 4 a.m. Noises downstairs woke Luddie and me up so we woke up Mei and told her where we were going. We had to go through the floor beneath to get to the perimeter. A few sleepy heads were poking out curious about the commotion. Matron Gonzales came down after us. As we were coming around the corner I thought I could hear a familiar voice, but I pegged it down to sleep deprivation and stress. Never been so glad to be wrong.

First I saw was Berwald shouldering his way through Security with Audrey clinging to one shoulder, Peter on his leg and Lili holding onto the back of his jacket, who had Gio on the back of hers. Lili and Luddie ran for each other the second they saw each other. Lili is a tiny thing but the German must be strong in her, because when she hugged him around the waist she got him off his feet and kept him there. I usually only see that kind of strength in Luddie. It was cute. Little cousin had big cousin in a fireman's lift. For a split second I missed my family so much I wanted to cry then I got swept up in the excitement and handed out some bear hugs too.

Audrey cried, Peter cried, I sobbed happy tears, Lili cried, Luddie wiped away a couple of sneaky ones, Gio couldn't stand up he laughed so much and Teddy Ber stood in the middle totally expressionless. The man is made of steel I swear. Others were attracted downstairs by the noise, mostly the guys from the second floor. Once they saw what was going on one of them ran up to the nations' floor. The other guys were happy even though they hung back. I guess they didn't want to intrude on the 'special international' moment, which I heard Adande (Jamaica's city of Kingston) call it. I wish you could have seen my friends' faces when they recognised the new arrivals. Audrey was passed from shoulder to shoulder so people could hug properly. She was scared silly and delighted to be out of the rough areas of the school. Poor kid's only eight years old she must have been so overwhelmed by it all. I'm seventeen and I'm so overwhelmed it feels like I'm drowning. By the time she got to my shoulder she had calmed down enough to replace her sobbing with talking.

"I never thought I would see anybody here again!" she said, her eyes still wet "I thought you were all dead or that I would die before I got the chance and I want my mom." She went off into hysterical sobbing at that point. Whenever Mattie and I got upset that badly Papa would cuddle us and murmur happy things in French. It felt kind of awkward for me doing it but it worked like a charm. On the down side it made Gio cry too.

Because it was 4 in the morning the only thing the group wanted to do -apart from learn who among their peers was alive- was sleep. Eventually Tino and the other 'Nordics' found Berwald, the only one missing from their usual group. Hugs and manly tears all around. Except for Berwald. He has no tear ducts or strong emotions that's, my working theory. He left to catch up with his friends, taking Peter with him, after he checked Audrey would be alright in the care of Lili and the rest of the girls. Although his bed is in my dorm he spent the night with them, probably catching up with the best of his friends. Now that they had Lili and Audrey to fill up some beds, Mei and Bella felt it wouldn't be too much to sleep in their own dorm for the rest of the night. Gio sacked out in Ven's bed and I know Ven wouldn't mind because Gio is his cousin. Heck, if Ven had come back with them I'll bet he would have got in bed with him - Ven doesn't care about personal space at all. Peter must have slept in bed with one of the boys in the Nordics' dorm. If someone would let me I would certainly crawl into bed with somebody. Call me gay as much as you want. It's true anyways.

Well friends it is with regret I inform you I must depart for the land of sleepiness. It's been a rough series of nights. However I daresay things are looking up from here. Tomorrow morning I'll bet more people will arrive. Ven and Liz and Roddy and Oscar will all burst through the perimeter with a thousand armed Marines and we will mow down the putrefied masses and escape to freedom and my god I need to sleep look at what I'm writing. Good night.

**Okay. As Alfie said, things are starting to look up. Did I just call him Alfie? Bedtime for me too. Good night friends. If it is not night where you are please replace my greeting with the appropriate salutation.**


	10. Entry 10

Monday 14th March 2013 (evening)

The group of survivors from yesterday seem to have given everyone else permission to crawl out of the woodwork. Asal Amirkhani, Maya Mark and Sharnae Jones (no relation to me, Alfred Jones) came in a group. We regained the nation of Iran, the state Rhode Island and the city of London. Then in came Oscar Kirkland on his own, totally surprised to find so many of his friends alive and well, so Australia has re-joined the ranks too. Then best of all, the person I wished would come back the most returned and with company!

This afternoon I was bored out of my mind. I decided to go exploring and I roped Sadie and Luddie into the expedition too. In our school there was a network of fire exits with at least a mile of catwalks and staircases the students could use in times of siege to get to the designated safe points on the rooftops or in the basements without ever going back inside. A few feet of the catwalks had been sabotaged on every exit, just enough so that we couldn't use it- not unless you were an Olympic level long jumper or Spiderman. The fire axes were probably used – the cases that held them are empty and had a shatter of glass on the floor around them. Security must have the axes. I know it should make me feel better Security is being so thorough, but it just makes me uneasy. Or maybe they took the axes because they knew the odds of one of us students going insane and pulling a Shining is very good. Remember those vents I talked about earlier? Security hasn't touched the vents yet in a visible way. If they have the vents are still functioning.

The three of us had checked the fire exits on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth floor (the medical bay and generators and garage on 1, the canteen on 2, the provinces and states and small islands on 3, nations on 4, teachers and the matrons' living quarters on 5, Security on 6. The girls and boys are separated by a landing that gets locked so there's no straight hanky-panky.) and found the same thing every time. On the second floor we sat down by one to discuss our findings.

"At least we know Security is making an effort to keep us safe." said Luddie.

"I don't like the looks they give us," Sadie said "When they think we're not looking. Like we're something the cat dragged in. I wouldn't trust them further than I could throw them."

Which would be far. I never understood that phrase.

I was going to say something, but I was interrupted as a large panel swung open from the ceiling and smacked me in the back of the head. Being me, I was standing in exactly the right position and was exactly tall enough to be injured by the vents opening. My head spun so I thought I was hallucinating when Elizabeta Hédeváry slid out of the hole in the ceiling. Ven practically fell out after her and both of them had to help Roderich down. Liz was covered in blood, Ven's arm was bandaged up with a piece of shirt (Liz's I think since her shirt stopped at her midriff) and Roderich was shaking so hard I could hear his teeth chattering.

They didn't notice us until Sadie said "Is that a bite Ven?"

Cue another tearful reunion. I'm getting really good at them.

Sadie swung into doctor mode and gave all three of them the once over. Liz was drenched in someone else's blood but also bleeding herself from two cuts and a shallow –and unexplained- gunshot wound in her shoulder. Ven had a large gushing cut on his right arm and a smaller one on his leg turning his jeans red. Why was he in jeans instead of his uniform? Apparently the three of them had been bunking Spanish. Since Ven and Roderich are already fluent and Liz maintains she can't cram another language in her head with Hungarian, German and the Swiss German dialect, Polish, Austrian German and Italian taking up the space. Roderich was simply scared silly. Not in shock yet but it took some serious effort to pry him off me once he got a grip.

We took them over to the official medical bay on the first floor. The doctors patched up Ven and Liz and wrapped Roderich in a foil blanket. Liz looked like she'd bust out of an Egyptian crypt by the time she escaped the medical staff. She probably wouldn't have needed so much bandaging if Lili hadn't seen her. Like I said, the German is strong in her. Be warned! Enthusiastic hugs from people remotely related to the Beilschmidt family will cause pain.

It's the middle of the afternoon currently, nothing is happening, I'm tired of exploring already so prepare yourself for a huge entry.

I should explain a little bit about the school. Maybe the world will recover and I'll have to omit the secrets of the school or just burn this whole damn thing because it would be a condemning piece of evidence. Until the time I have to hand this journal over to the men in black I might as well treat it like a record, a document from the world pre-zombies.

I already said a child is taken from each nation and raised to become a leader or take on an influential role close to the leader of their birth nation. Every four years the school takes a new batch of children, or 'generations', from sets of parents who are already influential in the birth nation. We're taken to the school concealed in this godforsaken corner of Maine when we're around our 10th birthdays, raised and taught together to grease the wheels of international peace in the future. Also we are each given a field to specialise.

Let me see…Luddie has mathematics and mechanics because his brain is pretty much wired for it, Sadie is a doctor and knows his way around at least nine different types of doctor-ing (I made a new word), Bella is being trained in politics like me, so we basically have to specialise in a bunch of field and be great talkers, and I think they just picked chemistry for eleven-year-old Audrey's special field. Let's see how many more people I can remember: Kiku is in mechanical design, Ivan is a politician/sociologist in the making too, Ven is a historian (and a young Da Vinci, he can draw like a boss), Sadik is almost a fully certified doctor), Roderich is a translator, Heracles is a politician (who knows how he could make any progress through the red tape when he sleeps about 18 hours a day), the Baltic kid Eduard is a computer technician/hacker, the second Baltic kid Toris is in child support and psychology (a personal nanny who can double as a shrink for the stressed parents) and I don't know what the other Baltic kid Raivis does. Mostly he shivers and dives out of Ivan's way.

Peter is being trained to be the leader of his country/small oil rig a few miles of the coast of Felixstowe, England, and I have no idea what Suzy does. He'll probably be one of those guys in suits who stand behind politicians looking scary to deter assassination attempts. I don't know…Antonio is has the ass of a bullfighter and the career of a pending politician too. Hell all of us are politicians! The ones who aren't are the minorities. It's no wonder we squabble so much.

So yeah, the World Academy. That's what we are. A truckload of kids from different nations, provinces/states, islands, republics blah blah blah blah…brought up together to further the cause of world peace. The theory is that if very powerful people within two different nations have been friends from their early childhoods it will be easier for nations to interact civilly and avoid international problems. I think it's a great idea. I miss my parents and brother like HELL but it'll be worth it if we can help hurry world peace on.

My generation includes most of the guys I listed up there except for Raivis and Audrey of course. Raivis is 15. The rest of us are 16. In my closest group of friends Luddie is the youngest at 2 months into his 16th year and Kiku is the oldest being born in December. His next birthday will probably be celebrated in midst of zombies, or maybe we'll be so focused on surviving we'll forget. What about my next birthday? I might forget how old I am if I live long enough.

Dunno how long I want to live in this. If I lost my friends I think I might throw myself at death. These people are my family, my friends and there is probably a future husband among them. I'm separated from my blood-related family. Sometimes I feel like killing them all in the most brutal, creative way I can imagine, then roll in their blood and do a victory dance stark naked under the full moon. But I also love them. Families act this way. If I lost just one of my people it would stay with me for the rest of my life. Even one of the people I'm not brother-bonded with like Toris or Maya or Ahmet, their faces would be on the inside of my eyelids every time I shut them. If I lost Antonio or Bella or yes, I will admit this, Ivan, it would emotionally destroy me. Kiku I don't even wanna think about. As far as I'm concerned he's immortal.

I read about these characters in books and films who have continued on after having lost all they had and all whom they loved and who despite it all are marching on into the night. I know I couldn't do it. What would be the point anyways if your whole world had been ripped away? What's the point in a search for a new one? I wouldn't want a new world. I would want my old one with all its comforts and discomforts and weird quirks back. The idea of leaving this school as a lone man, possibly with a rifle strapped to my back and a gun at my belt and a fuzzy beard growing is just disgusting- I don't want to be a lone action hero! I wanna be the hero with my loveable cast of compatriots and sidekicks. The people who make up these stories centred around a single figure of inexhaustible bravery and resourcefulness with a plan to get out of every problem thrown at them are just make believe. Dumb make believe. I mean shit - no one could do it on their own. I've barely been making it along surrounded by my people.

Lately I've been having the worst nightmares of my life. One re-occurring dream haunts me the most. I'm standing in a big black expanse surrounded by my friends, all dead on the floor covered in blood with glassy eyes and ripped apart in the worst ways possible. Sometimes the way they've been torn up changes a little. But their eyes are always trained on me accusingly. I look down at my hands and my hands are red and my fingers are scraped to the bone. I can't move, I can't scream, I can't look away.

They say if you have the same dream repeatedly it will become true.

**A/N: It's getting darker and darker as it goes along. If you can't handle depressing situations very well you'd be better off finding different, happier fanfic to follow because there's not much brightness from here and on out. People are going to be killed, mutilated, suffer from clinical depression (the proper type, not the type that is banished by meeting some great guy and making love), have to kill their friends, be beaten up, hurt, separated, betrayed and drenched in blood. This whole fanfic will be drenched in blood. Sorry. As a writer I have this habit of beating my characters to the bloodiest piece of pulp I can manage in words. Have a good one anyways, laters. **


	11. Entry 11

**I got some extra time this week to upload an additional chapter ahead of schedule. Unfortunately I don't think I can make this a regular occurrence. You can expect another upload on our traditional date dear readers. I warned you it was going to get rough. And here it goes, getting rough. I'm sorry, but like I said, I have a despicable tendency to hurt my characters.  
I don't own Hetalia and thank a deity or everyone would be shell-shocked husks of people. I don't own any of the song titles or bands that crop up in this fic either. I only own the story and the background OCs, who, let's face it, are barely more than glorified zombie fodder.**

Tuesday 15th March 2013

Today has been the worst day in my memory- worse than the days I was stuck in the Math room with the others and the days I spent praying my friends would come back safe. I'm stuck in this weird purgatory of emotions, between a rage that would probably result with me murdering someone and a desire to cry for everything we lost up to this point which would have me curled up in a ball under my bed. I don't know what I should do. What I saw, what I know happened should be classed as attempted murder.

I don't know…I don't know what I should do, because what I saw is going to put us all in danger. Not 'if it's true'. Trust me this is the real thing! I know what I saw! I'll be lucky if I can ever get the scene out of my head, but it might as well have been burned onto my retinas. Every time I shut my eyes I see it. My ears are still ringing from the gunshots and screams.

Lili Zwingili was bitten this afternoon.

There was a breach at the perimeter on the third floor. Six zombies somehow got past a dozen heavily armed ex-soldiers, shambled down the hallway without so much as a nick from a bullet and into the hallway where at least 30 unarmed teenagers were taken by surprise.

The guys in the main hallways had no chance. Before anyone knew what was happening three people were bitten and Marichka was pinned to the floor by two zombies and her organs were being scooped out of her back in handfuls. Too scared to help, the majority ran. Only brave stupid Ahmet came to her aid.

Someone who looked back reported the last they saw of him he had whacked the bigger of the two with a fire extinguisher while the other four closed in and Marichka squirmed and cried on her front. I didn't see Ahmet stumbling around later, unlike Marichka who I personally shot in the skull. Maybe they lost interest when a noisier target presented himself. I haven't heard anyone mention recovering his remains.

Upstairs in a little-used branch of the hallway, I was plugged into my iPod by myself. Imagine Dragons was up at the loudest volume I could stand. I think I must have been trying to drown out my problems. Never doing that again. Who knows how long I sat there on my own unaware of what was going on. I could have been helping to save lives. Instead I just sat in a closet and stared at a water stain on the wall in a pathetic haze of self-pity.

_Oh look at me my problems are so bad. I can't sleep at night and I feel like I'm on the verge of a panic attack all day and these people have started to annoy me- _GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! WHAT A DICK! AT LEAST I'M FUCKING ALIVE. SO ARE MY PARENTS AND BROTHER AS FAR AS I KNOW! MY COUSIN HASN'T TRIED TO EAT ME. MY FRIENDS ARE ALIVE TOO!

Yesterday I called them my family. I talked about how they were all that I have right now, how this school has become my whole world. Said I would rather die with them than live as the lone survivor. Thought to myself I would do my utmost to protect them.

Well I fucked that up. While they took up guns -some of them had never fired before- to help each other, I sat alone in a corner with a sad song on loop and hoped someone would come along soon and ask me what was wrong so I could have a pity party.

Eventually I took the song off the loop, which created a pause just long enough between the songs that I heard the fighting. As soon as the situation registered in my mind I was off like a shot, stuffing the stupid machine in my pocket, praying I hadn't let someone die.

By following the noise at my top speed I came round the corner into a fight just in time to save someone.

This is what I saw. Heracles Karpusi struggled against a small but strong zombie, determined to bite into his throat. It had him against the wall with little or no hope of escape. Off to the left stood a member of Security named Dawson. She was a formidable woman, taller than me by at least 3 inches and she was armed with a machine gun. All she did was stand there. Stand there and watch him, her face totally apathetic. Almost like she enjoyed it! Hera wasn't calling for help. Every ounce of his concentration was focused on keeping his jugular inside his skin but the zombie got closer every second.

When I saw what was happening I quickly tackled the zombie around the waist then threw him against the wall as hard as I could. It didn't work. He kept coming.

"Shoot him!" I yelled at Dawson.

Dawson regarded me coolly and raised her gun. She levelled it with my chest. I would have been blown apart if it weren't for Lili, who came zooming out of nowhere and pushed the gun upwards just as Dawson's finger tensed on the trigger. Bullets ripped into the ceiling. One of them ricocheted off what must have been the bottom of the vents and stuck in the wall centimetres from Hera's face.

Dawson jerked the gun and connected with the side of Lili's face. She knocked her back.

Into the zombie's waiting arms.

The zombie grabbed Lili by the arm and bit deep. She was too surprised to scream or flinch. I could hear bones splintering and veins popping. Blood sprayed around its teeth. The taste of her own blood on her lips must have brought Lili back to reality. Using all her strength she delivered a devastating uppercut. Although it tore the zombie off a piece of her came away with it; her first two fingers and a chunk of palm.

She had hit it just at the right angle to break its brittle neck. The body fell at Dawson's feet, twitching. She aimed the gun again and Lili began screaming. This time my saviour was Marichka.

She came out of nowhere and ploughed Dawson straight off her feet. It was only as I ran to Lili I realised Marichka's skin had festered grey. She dug into Dawson with gusto. I grabbed the machine gun that had fallen to the side. My arms were unprepared for the weight - I wasted four bullets before I plugged Marichka in the back of the skull. Dawson was dead too. Marichka had followed the Transylvanian tradition of her people and had torn out Dawson's throat.

I stood there gaping for a second. That was the first time I had ever shot someone. I did it about a million more times today, and it didn't get any easier. Lili's screams attracted more zombies down the hall and they ran as fast as Marichka had. It barely clicked in time I should shoot them too. If I had hesitated a microsecond longer than I did all three of us would have been eaten, then possibly get back up and satisfy ravenous appetites with the corpses of our friends.

Blood flies like you wouldn't believe. One single bullet vaporises everything it passes and blows it out of the body in a red vapour. You can't begin to imagine what a machine gun does, especially in the hands of an inexperienced, terrified teenager. Video games do NOT prepare you for it. Action movies do NOT prepare you for it. War documentaries do NOTHING brace your mind for the first- hand experience. When the last one fell my hair had gone from blonde to red.

Hera had gathered up Lili in his arms. The screams had dwindled to a low moan, almost the moan I have heard so many times issuing from a dead throat. I thought she had turned until she looked up at me and whispered "Cut it off."  
Hera and I noticed the knife strapped to Dawson's belt at the same time.

"Cut it off." she said again "Please. I'll turn if you don't. I saw it happen to the kids." I think those were her words. She stuttered so badly they were hard to discern. However there could be no mistaking her request when she nodded weakly to the knife and tried to lift her bitten hand.

What else could I have done? I retrieved the knife. We moved her gently to the floor, her head in Hera's lap and his grip pinning her to the floor by shoulders. She took a fistful of her shirt in her free hand and bit down on the collar of her jacket.

I cut her hand off a few inches along the wrist. The blade seemed alive as it bit through her skin, muscles, veins and went through the bone without much trouble. It was sharp. I am physically strong. Together we made a quick job of her wrist.

Blood has a life of its own too. When it knows it will be split it picks a target it will stain. It knows once it has been washed off, the stain will remain. I will wake up with the blood down my front, in my hair, my eyes, my mouth, dripping off the end of my nose…for the rest of my life. I will look down at my two hands and find them drenched wet crimson for the rest of my life.

I'm alright with this. I bought Lili's life with my actions. She is worth it a thousand times over. I'll never regret it.

We wrapped the stump in a tourniquet made from my shirt and wrapped her in Hera's jacket, I took the gun and we left. I didn't tell Heracles I had realised the identity of the first zombie attacker. I haven't told anyone.

It was Vash. The representative of Switzerland, the eternally neutral sharp shooter of the school. He was also Lili's older brother.

I cradled Lili to my chest as we ran to find Sadie. We literally ran through the zombies. The few around got very excited when they saw our little party- or if Luddie's correct when they heard Lili whimpering. Luckily for us Heracles was a lot more successful with the machine gun than my attempts. Don't ask me why we were looking for Sadie instead of bee lining it for the medical bay on the first floor. After the Dawson incident I wanted to entrust Lili to someone I knew would protect her. Dawson was going to let Heracles die.

I had the strangest feeling the situation would be similar in the medical bay as did Hera, and the patient made no complaints when I told her of my intentions.

She's in the med bay right now. I doubt anyone could do a thing to her if they wanted to; Luddie is beside her bed. He'll go to sleep eventually and Bella will take over for him. There is a unanimous agreement Lili should not be on her own while she recovers- and she will recover. We're sure of that now.

She looked like she might die in my arms a few hours ago. It was so scary. Blood just kept coming out. The hasty tourniquet was as useful as a band-aid. Finally, just as I thought she would be taking her last ragged breath right there in my arms, Sadie popped out of nowhere. In the nick of time. He's great at doing that.

"She bitten?" he had to shout over the chatter of the other students.  
"Yeah. I cut her hand off." she and I shuddered together.  
"How long ago?"

"Four or five minutes." was Hera's estimate. I would have said an hour.  
"She'll be fine then. All we have to do is stop the bleeding."

He effectively saved her life in the middle of the hallway. First he sent Feliks and Eduard for the professional medical staff. Next he sent Toris to find Luddie (he turned out to be downstairs finishing off the last of the zombies) and inform him of his cousin's state. Then he laid claim to Oscar's lighter and the stash of vodka he knew Ivan knew the teachers kept in the last broom closet at the end of the corridor (thank God he's a creepy all-knowing bastard otherwise she probably would have bled out). With these materials he cauterized the wound. Disinfected the stump and burnt it shut.

She didn't make a sound louder than the hiss of a sharp breath. Hera held her free hand the entire time while Bella and I held down the rest of her body so she wouldn't flail.

Luddie arrived in time to see Sadie bandaging up the wound with a real piece of sterile gauze rather than someone's shirt. Lili smiled weakly as she saw him.

"I was bitten." her voice was barely a whisper. "But I'm fine now."

Luddie doesn't cry much. Sure he shed one or two tears during movies, books, video games (funnily enough the Walking Dead was the one that had him sobbing). He's a serious person. Even the way he cries is serious. His expression doesn't change a lot. The tears start to flow, even though his eyes won't get bloodshot. It's almost like he cries because he knows the reaction is expected at sad times, like even though he reacts to it he has detached himself from the emotion which summons the tears.

"You look kind of rough." he took her from me carefully. "Your clothes are a mess."

"You don't look so hot yourself." the girl smiled and tried a friendly prod at one of his scrapes, but the effort proved too much and she fainted.

"Don't worry L," Sadie reassured him "She won't turn. Al and Heracles made sure of that."

He looked at us for a long moment. "Thank you."

Hera nodded. I sorta just sat there. Couldn't think of a reply. I'll say something soon. I just don't know what I should say.

The medics ran in a couple minutes later and whisked the cousins off fast. The current population of the med bay: Lili Zwingili for an ("surprisingly clean") amputation, Elizabeta Hédeváry for a concussion, Berwald Oxenstierna for a gunshot wound and Audrey for hysterical shock. The beds surrounding them are full too. A lot of people are down there. I can only worry about so much before I have a nervous breakdown. How did Suzy get that shot in his shoulder? Sadik had a quick look at him while he helped in the bay and he said the slug hit him from behind. Surely there are no people in the student body supremely stupid enough to mistake a warm body for a cold one. Even in a panic the difference is obvious.

Dawson…starting from today I am going to prepare for a war with security. Dawson could be a one off. Or they could all be slowly turning against the children they were initially trained to protect. Desperate people are the ones you must always watch under pressure. With the guns and perimeters and their modest numbers, the Security personnel could live in the school comfortably for years. Why should they worry about children they are no longer obligated to protect?

And where are the teachers? I haven't seen a single teacher, and I see less and less of the Matrons every day. Maybe they're in hiding. Or maybe there's a better explanation for the fact that I saw Matron Hunter and Matron Kjellberg among the dead today than misfortune.

How did those zombies get through?

The dead:

Vash Zwingili

Ahmet Yilmaz

Maya Mark

Matron Hunter

Matron Kjellberg

Blythe Keiz

Four more people were bitten. I can't remember who.

**a/n I'm so sorry Lili TT-TT. Be strong little lady, your time will come.**

**(I think I owe you guys an explainer here: I based the nations' specialisations on certain trades that would be very useful in the current climate and suit their personality, because I can see Ivan charging through the web of red tape in the Kremlin with his sociologist powers, or a trade that their nation was particularly known for or skilled in in the past.**

**For example Middle Eastern doctors were much safer than European doctors. For a headache they would prescribe more fresh fruit in the diet whereas European doctors would drill a hole in the head and drain out some water from the brain. Don't get me wrong- NHS whoop whoop, but I thought the role of the doctor would suit Sadik so well. He doesn't get enough love. And his name is not spelled with a 'q' because they don't have that letter in the Turkish alphabet. That's right they spell 'quickly' as 'kuickly' because they're actually that badass in Turkey.**

**OKAY I'M RAMBLING TIME TO SLEEP.)**


	12. Entry 12

**Britain seems to have remembered it's supposed to be cold. No matter, because now I have an excuse to wear my bear-claw slippers again.**

**I don't own Hetalia or the characters from Peter Pan.**

Wednesday 16th March 2013

( 5 a.m.)

Lili woke up briefly on my shift, during which I am writing.

"Why does my hand hurt so much?"

I volunteered to take part of the night shift because I figured I should make up for my absence during the fighting, although no one has asked me about it. I haven't explained it either. This silent guilt has been eating away at me. I wouldn't have slept if I tried to go to sleep anyways; I'm too tired to sleep.

Obviously she was confused and disorientated when she asked. Who wouldn't be after an amateur amputation? I tried to explain to her what had happened, but she was insistent her hand remained attached and was hurting her badly. Too weak to move, she couldn't lift her head to observe the stump lying beside her draped in gauze. You try convincing a half-asleep, heavily sedated girl you preformed an amputation on her left arm and prevented her from becoming a zombie - she won't believe it. I was afraid I would hurt her if I picked her arm up and showed her. I ended up calling one of the medics over.

The medic didn't try talking to her for long. He asked: "What's wrong?"

"My left hand feels like it's on fire."

He glanced at the stump and cocked an eyebrow "Your left hand was amputated. You're experiencing disambiguation. You may feel your left hand but that is only because the nerves are residual nerves are inflamed. There's nothing we can do for maladaptation, just go back to sleep and it will fade with time."

This did absolutely nothing to help. Lili repeated what she had said to me. The medic waved her words away and said to me: "Would you like me to give her a sleeping pill?"

I wanted to punch him so hard. Instead I forced a polite 'no thank you' and flipped him off when he retreated, presumably to re-adjust the steel rod jammed up his ass. Bastard. What's wrong with him? She's a patient dumbass! Where's your fucking bed-side manner?!

I understood the gist of what Dr Asshole said so I tried explaining it. I had to grope far back into my brain where it stored the junk I absorbed in Biology. "Your nerves still think your hand is there Lils. They're firing signals that tell the brain it is. (I had to think way back to Biology dredging up the next part) The brain interprets this stuff as pain because the memory of the hand being removed is in the-the Hippocampus, so what your brain was told constitutes as nonsense. The nonsense turns into pain. That pain makes it feel like the hand is still there because the nerves the information is relayed back to still believe it is."

Lili was still confused. She nodded even thought I knew she didn't understand what the heck Alfred was jabbering about, and slept again a few moments later. Poor kid. I included the explanation in case the person who reads this journal has a member of their group experiencing this, or if they have the problem themselves.

Hell I don't know if people will travel around in groups. People get lonely fast. Then again this whole thing might blow over in a couple of months. Highly unlikely but still a possibility.

Ugh. Sleep must come now. I am too tired to be too tired for sleep now. Teddy Ber just came in to sit with her, so I should pack up the book and hit the hay.

(5:00 p.m.)

It occurred to me early this morning I wanted to see the sky again.

My only view of it has been through the windows. Usually I was more interested in the churning dead beneath it, searching for signs of deterioration or starvation and I've found no hints of either dammit. But the sky is still there. A big blue or grey or white or black cradle that has the whole world under it. Even if the world underneath becomes red the sky won't change its colour. Maybe the ashes from fires I know must be ablaze the globe will stain a couple of little patches ashy, but it will be unchanged mostly. I wonder if humans will ever be able to wander up there again. With parachutes and planes and the other stuff. Will we? I like planes. The sensation of flying is one of my favourites. Right now my people are grounded, but maybe tomorrow a whole army of helicopters will land on the roof and carry us all home.

I went up to the roof alone. For student access, we have a whole staircase separate to the teachers' and Security's. The two top floors are blocked off completely with deadlocks and heavy doors. I wonder why?

When I got to the roof I wasn't alone, which I didn't realise for a long time.

First I was dazzled by the sky. It was a nasty, cold day. A harsh breeze was blowing down from the clouds and it went straight through my thin clothes. Apparently March hasn't remembered it's supposed to be March yet. It's freezing cold outside. The sky was grey, a shade of grey I have decided is the prettiest type of grey I have ever seen and probably ever will see. The clouds were heavy with rain. I hoped it would rain. I wanted to feel water that hadn't come through pipes before it touched me. I mean, odds are the water has, but I wanted to feel something that had come directly from Mama Nature. Something to remind me you're up there lady, a little thunder, a forest fire, a torrential downpour that sweeps the dead away in the resulting flood.

Haven't had a single thing. At that time, just seeing the sky again, knowing I was still in the global cradle, was enough. For a moment I shivered in the cold. Then I smelled the smoke.

A couple of meters away, Kiku was burning the flags. Usually there's a huge wall of the flags of the world in the canteen. Who knows how he got all of them down. The flags were hung in columns that almost reached the ceiling and every single one of them were burning or had been burned already. earlier I heard Bella and Antonio and Ivan talking about the total lack of flags on the Flag Wall, which I totally missed during breakfast on account of being dead tired. On the other hand I'm not completely incredulous of Kiku's ability to single-handedly strip a 2 story wall of over 200 flags, he is a trained 'ninja' after all.

As I watched he tossed the Belarusian and Ukrainian flags on the fire together. he ahd built the fire inside a triangular pit he'd stuffed with pieces of a broken chair. An empty oil drum labelled '4th floor generator' lay on its side nearby. The smell of ashes and wood-smoke and melting polymers made a disgustingly potent combination, covering up the stench of the masses crowding the grounds. The wind blew it away quickly, but more rose to replace it. There weren't many flags left. I only spoke up when he had burned the last one -Antonio's flag.

"What's up with this?"

He wasn't surprised. He probably had known I was there since I came up, his senses are scarily well honed. Wiping his ashy palms on his jeans, he turned to face me, his face dark in the shadows from the flames. "They were barely more than name tags and now_ this_ has happened, flags are useless scraps of fabric."

His words echoed my own fears identically, but I faked optimism for his sake. "We might be an…isolated incident." (Luddie style vocabulary for affect)

"You don't have to play dumb for my feelings Al-kun. If we really are the only people experiencing this, why aren't the phones working?" he gestured in the direction of the run of phone lines concealed by the trees that leaf off through the forest to a major city. "Nobody can get a signal on the cells or a connection on the landlines, the TVs aren't working, not even the emergency broadcast systems. Obviously the cities have been overwhelmed. The students of this school are supposed to be political liaisons. We're priorities for times of difficulty. If the heads of states are compromised, and I believe a lot of them have been, we are supposed to succeed them, or at least work in close conjunction with the officially appointed successor. Out of all the disasters that could conceivably occur in the world- and believe you me this is fairly fucking unexpected- the nations will need to coordinate to survive it, so why haven't they retrieved the tools shaped exactly for the purpose of coordination?"

It's hard to know how to reply to an angry Kiku. He's a calm person most of the time, and when he has an outburst like this you never know an appropriate response.

I agree. The outside world is dead or close to dying. In shambles at least. We won't be rescued. If we want to escaped we're going to have to do it on our own. when I say 'on our own' I literally mean we're going to have to rely only on each other and ourselves. Yesterday Security was zero help. Heracles almost died and Lili lost an ENTIRE HAND. They won't protect us.

Kiku is right; we're not getting any help.

"Let's save ourselves." I said "We're all sixteen, or around about. That's an adult in most societies. And we're much more skilled than the average adult, thanks to this Draconian upbringing (with thanks to Luddie for the quote). We're all close to the peak of our physical abilities and we all have basic survival training. We have a doctor. We have a genius. We can do it."

The pause was awkward. I picked through what I had said, searching for a flaw, something to give him a reason to just stare in silence the way he did.

Finally he said "You want us to become the Lost boys?"

Not the intended impression "Uh…yeah, let's go for it. I'll be Peter Pan, you can be Rufio." Me being me, this is what came out.

I can't help it. If it were someone else I might have been coherent. Talking to Kiku is like sticking an eggbeater in my skull and whirling it enthusiastically. Well the effect is anyways. I count myself lucky if actual words come out.

"What is it you came up here for?" he asked after a moment-after _the_ moment had passed. I told him about my ache for the sky. We sat on the roof for a while, just talking. The topic varied so much I won't even bother to record all of them. Long story short; it was a nice talk. I feel so much better for it. I vented, and so did he, which was weird because it doesn't happen frequently.

But it was nice. Actually, I felt the best I have on the roof since this whole thing began.

And I think we are going to have to do what I suggested. It'll be hard. Undoubtedly some of us are going to die. Some of us are already dead.

But we can save ourselves, I know we can.

We haven't got an alternative.

**a/n :Did anyone notice that broken chair thing? The statue outside the UN building in Geneva? No? alright Random, stop being so damned chuffed and tell the people something useful.**

**I noticed a lot of you seem confused about certain details of the story in the reviews, so feel free to drop me a PM if you want to ask any questions. I might not answer the ones that are too spoiler-ey but I will definitely do my best to explain. Thanks so much for reading and have a nice day/night/super-long night if you're reading this in the Arctic or Alaska or one of those places with ½ day ½ night years.**


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